So basically, because you have played a 10+ year old game many, many times you get to define what constitutes a "true" Fallout game?

who exactly was that directed twords?
If I came across that way I am sorry, but I never ment to say its not a ture fallout game, just that it should be a spinoff and not #3, kinda like I enjoy Fallout: Brother of steel and Fallout Tactics: BOS, because they are not cannon, they dont have a number and they dont try to be #3, they ARE GREAT fallout games, but they DON"T pretend to be fallout 3.
And that is exactly how I feel about fallout 3, its should have been fallout DC or some such like I said.


Also don't get me wrong, I was here before it came out, and I'm still here, fallout 3 is a great Action shooter, with some light rpg elements and a story that borrows from the first two fallouts, I used to sing the praises about how great it would be, only to be dissapointed and let down.
I let that go, and looked over it, I played it for a spin off and I had fun.
I even bought the lunch box.

Like I said, this game could have learned alot form the witcher, and the first two fallout's, and I think it would be better off as a spin-off game, not #3 in line.

So basicly, because I have played the older games, and I respect the games and the people who made them, I post my thoughts here, I don't agree with the changes, but there is nothing I can do about it.

I don't get to define what constitutes ANY thing, nor do I try to.

So next time, basicly what you can do is try to make some sort of valid pont, to counter my points? insted of just posting a simple one liner?
Or provide any sort of reasons why it is better, that way we can have a nice civil debate on the topic.

Your ball.

I think Fallout should define what constitutes a Fallout game. But Fallout is unable to comment. People can try in its place, however.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Secret_Vault
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_87

Yep, that seems to be about the long and the short of it, for those guys. *sigh*

Fallout 3 rehashed a lot...almost everything in fact. The story was okay, the factions were all transplanted from the west coast, and it seemed to just sort of hop off of the old games without breaking any new ground.

But the Fallout 3 did a lot of things really, really well from a gameplay perspective and it's a great game. With the same engine and some more originality it could have been better, though.

Also... we don't need the BOS in EVERY game.

And remember: there wouldn't even BE a Fallout 3 without Bethesda.

My two cents

If one likes the gameplay style of Elder Scrolls, maybe.



Why? Bethesda was the highest bidder, they weren't the only contender for the license.

Thanks for that, Ausir I'll be adding that shortly.

I meant no offense, you're entitled to your opinion so there's nothing to debate. I just think people should agree to disagree more. FO3 is not going to change aside from applying mods; all one can hope is that Bethesda takes some of your grievances/suggestions to heart for an eventual(?) FO4.

To be honest, I wish Bethesda would outsource the entire Fallout franchise to Obsidian so they can fully concentrate on future TES games.

Maybe they keep them because they WANT to make them? Obsidian is a decent company but I've had just as many problems from their games as Bethesdas. No matter who made FO 3 and how it was done someone somewhere on the internet would complain about it. It's one of the laws of the Universe.

Well, I do like the style. It doesn't like me, I svck at real-time, but I enjoy it. Is it known who did the bidding for the property?

umm? we just want to see the games we loved contuined in a manner that is ( imo ) better than what beth has done with it.




None taken, but I was hoping for a small debate, get the brain going and provides lots of info on each side. but im not trying to spur you, sorry if it sounded harsh.

I agree that we probly will never agree, and that fallout-3 wont changes ( out side of mods ) but like you I do wish they would outsource, Fallout vegas is getting done that way.
I can only hope that Beth sees the mods, and how they change/affect the game, as well as take into thought the feelings and wishes from ALL fans ( but mainly from the FO-1/2 crowd ) as everyone has great ideas.

Kinda like I love morrowind, and I like oblivion, but take the best parts of those ( morrwoinds RPG aspect ) and make a great game.

but that is just me.

Just want to add a comment here - I think that this kind of debate is fine and I have found this thread interesting. However, just a caution not to "personalize" comments, so that the conversation can continue. Thanks.

Fallout 3 is what Lockdown was to Rainbow Six, heh. Sad fact of gaming these days, though, I realized they're making a sequel to Op Flashpoint...and it's going to be neutered.

I actually don't think there is much value to debating Fallout1/2 versus Fallout3 - they are different games, but more importantly, they were made at very different times/era's in video game development.

I have seen it alot with other games; players fall in love with a game, play it alot and walk away with fond memories of the game that last. For folks who Really liked the older games, its usually the case that the modern versions never, "stack up" to them - because it is not what they remember. The newer game isn't going to elicit the same emotional attachment to the game that players will have after spending hundreds of hours in the older game.

I envision that TESV will experience a modern-version of this, as TESIV is still played and there will be a giant wave of people who loved Oblivion and will shoot-up the new version - no matter how good it is.

The opinions for why this game is better or that game is better are surely interesting, but ultimately useless - Fallout3 isn't going away and certainly isn't going to completely change into something close to Fallout1/2. I believe it is as much emotional attachment to the fond memories of the past game that make the newer one so unsatisfying to many. Oh they will come up with dozens of technical reasons why, but the root-cause is much more concerned with past-memory and experiences versus a new thing without such attachments.

My only comments is; Watch-Out Bethesda - If you are all indeed working on the next Oblivion-like game, your moderators will grow even thicker skin from all the, "This svcks compared to Oblivion!" posts. Ignoring 99% of them and weeding out the 1% that are hostile/flaming/un-ethical is (IMHO) the best response.

M

Jim Steele
"Right, because before Bethesda resurrected the franchise and made it into a highly profitable, million selling venture for the modern audience - Fallout was doing brilliantly."

Amen! That's a great comment

I read all the comments here and there are lots of good points.

To the guy who referenced my message on Vault-wiki; the reason I posted a message here is because you can't say anything on that board without being insulted and attacked, for no reason. You'd think a board dedicated to F3 would have less haters hanging in the shadows.

Here's my argument aganist the main complaints:

Fallout endings: yes, the F3 ending was pretty lack luster, and yes the F1 and F2 endings were amazing. Especially F2! It's probably the most memorable ending I ever saw in a game. It was SO good, in fact, that you can't reasonable expect anything to live up to it.

No customization: It's an RPG. That means you are given the OPTION to role play your character. If you make you character the same way every time, with the intent of maxing your stats with the 2 skill point book perk or educated and finding every bobblehead then yes, you'll have the same character every time. Take 1 INT and make a char, or something. Tell yourself you'll only eat food to restore health, or you'll only uses big guns and grenades to kill things.

The problem is, you people who say it's not an RPG is that you don't know HOW to role play. And in F1&2, you could easially max all your stats there as well. I'm not talking 2 or 300%, but with 10 int and gifted you could get 100% easy in most skills, especially if you looked for ever book.

Walking through the world map offers nothing new: that's because you have no imagination. In any exploration game it's ALWAYS the same: ground under your feet, objects in front of you. But there are tons of different structures and objects in F3 that really do lend each area it's own enviroment. And if you complain that the wasteland looks "the same" all over the place, duh! it's a wasteland! You're playing Fallout! Do you really want forests, castles, furturistic cities, etherial demensions, or fuzzy talking animals? If you do, you're playing the wrong game.

Certain weapon types are useless: nope, all the weapon types are great. Big guns svck? Energy weapons no good? Even before the DLC the only thing limiting the weapons was you. If you put 0 points in small guns and max out big guns, then you'll find a whole new way to approach combat situations. You only need one weapon skill to beat anything you want. Same with the previous versions, and I'm sure, VB too. If YOU limit yourself to using small guns all the time, because they're everywhere, then it's your fault the game seems not fun.

Part 2 of my above comment...

Look, the heart of this VB and F3 issue to me seems whether or not you know how to acutally play an RPG. Just because you're given more dialogue options or combat is turn based or not doesn't make an RPG. It's how you allow yourself to play. Example, take FF VI, what many would agree was a fantastic RPG back in the day. NO dialogue options. Pretty slim customization. But it's still an amazing R_P_G!

And that bring me to my final point

People instictively don't like change. VB is very much like F1&2. F3 is, yes, like someother games too, but it differs from the Fallout "norm".

Back when you played F1&2 you were much younger. Those memories we form as children/young advlts are the most powerful memories we have, right when we were beginning to have thoughts of our own that weren't given to us from teachers and parents. Will anything every really compare to the days in collage, that first love, or that game that first captured your imagination? If you said No, then you're setting yourself up for unhappiness. If the answer was Yes, then you probably know that things change and you don't whine about the past. And you probably like Fallout 3.

You, like anyone else, is in no position to dictate the reasons why some people prefer the originals to Fallout 3. Emotional attachment, fond memories, nostalgia, it's all an undermining slight against people's opinions that you would refuse to accept, which is a shame, as we all have the ability to be mature.

At the risk of repeating this point yet again, Fallout had the potential to be a sterling success whilst still being true to its original fanbase, whilst also coming leaps and bounds from the originals. It has been reinvented at the risk of losing its identity with what made it great in the first place. I'm not arguing that this is/is not the future of Fallout, that's not in my hands. Nevertheless, for better or for worse, Fallout 3 has deviated far from its roots. Mainstream would have likely been happy with any generic PA RPG, considering that a vast majority hadn't heard of the series prior, and most still have no desire to play them.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, would agree that is a great life lesson. More to the point, it still doesn't give you the right to dictate why someone else's opinion is, rightfully, their opinion.

I doubt that. Not that there even is a VB vs F3 issue, really. But it's refreshing to know that people think less of F3 because they lack ability, heh. It truly is wondrous.

I think, ( just me ) that there is a lot of value in debating it. Hopefully some one who has power or say in matters can read it and walk away with what the older fans expect of the newer game.

They where made at very different times, but that does not mean that they can not look at them, and there cannon and expand on it, insted of just copying it and changing what they want to fit there game.

For me at least, I really dont think its a emotional attachment , just more of a let down. I have a emotional attachment to my cats and dogs, and my famliy, I simply have expections for the series.
Fallout 3, is and will contuine to be a great game, BUT compared to the system's ( SPECIAL ) and dialog and story of the first two, this game pales in comparsion.
People often say that small changes are not as good as big ones ( Morrowind>Oblivion ) saying that no one would paly a new game that was just a slight tweak of the last one with a new story, they say it would get boring.
I say that it makes better game play, as long as the series is improving, and moving foward, large changes and leaps are not needed.

Saying people will hate on the next Elder scrolls is a sure bet, BUT, look at how much was lost from morrowind.
Oodles and ooldes of weapons, more skills and a deeper richer story, even though it took work to get there, after you got finished, you felt that you really done something.
The same for the first fallouts and fallout 3, the system was there, but broken, the skills where there but where condinsed and too easy to max.

Like I said its not a emotional attachment, at least not for me, its about taking what was established and twisting it, it did not have to be 100% carbon copy, but it SHOULD have been closer than it was ( IMO ) because it strayed too far, the ideas where too grand and the game came out good, but could have been much better.

The opinions for why this game is better or that game is better are surely interesting, but ultimately use full, because, it helps the game maker ( if they bother to read these things ) see what we liked from one game from the next, and help the entire game indstury as a whole ( assuming they read these )
even if they don't maybe the modders can help bring these things to life.

I don't think I ever found the game unsatisfying, I found the game Lacking, I had fun but I wish it was different, it was good, but should have been better, Beth is good at what they do, and that is a open world enviroment, but there gmaes have become more main stream ( morrowind>oblivion ) and as such have lost that special feeling.
Not knocking beth, but I feel that they lack the skills to write a good story and a make a in depth world, fallout 3 has a lot of detail, but lacks deapth, I love NWN-2 its a great story, and I think beth could learn alot from how it is wrote.
Look at the witcher, its has no good or evil, only choises and there resutls, a great feature that could work for fallout-4, I think they can learn form that as well.

Indeed. FO3 was a good game, but not great.

However, I felt quite "immersed" while playing all Fallout games. Switching to 1st person was a great idea, but the element of choice, causality and dialog (to name a few) could use some improvement. If that would mean that I'd have to pay 10 bucks more and they would have had it pressed on 2 discs so be it.

If my intelligence and charisma(beating a dead horse, I know) are 1 I want options in dialog, story and peoples reaction to tell me that I am a butt-ugly brainded wanderer.

Y'all know what I mean. tis been said over and over again.

Typed in bold in your quote.

I see his point, and he gives some good examples about INT and Chrisma.

Problem is, the effect of stats on gameplay in FO3 is also much smaller than in FO1/2/T and than would be in VB.

No, but it could have tried, couldn't it? The endings of the first games weren't so incredibly awesome so much because of the quality of the writing or for Ron Perlman's narration (which I felt were equal to Fallout 3) but because of the depth of detail they went into showing you the effects of your actions on the Wasteland. Just that alone lent all my decisions in the game that much more gravity.

When I'd play through again, it wasn't so I could see the "evil" ending, it was to see what specific changes I could make on the future of a specific area or person. I wasn't just the "good guy," in the original games - I was "this good guy who did X, Y, and Z." I don't even know exactly what choices dictated the different permutations of the endings, but it gave (me, at least) the illusion that any choice I might make in the game could have a profound effect. In Fallout 3, the only real effect I had on the end of the game was my ending Karma level and what choice I made at the very end - nothing I did throughout the entire game actually "mattered" in that respect (other than a couple slideshow images that really didn't contain much narrative information.)

As far as videogame endings go overall, I thought FO3's wasn't half bad. But it did fall short of what I'd expected from a Fallout game. And that's not because of quality, but because it wasn't even the same type of ending. I would have accepted the same sort of approach to an ending that just didn't work as well for some reason. But I didn't get that. Saying that there's no way that FO3 could have lived up to the endings of the original is (to me) kind of like giving me a second season of Firefly, only this time it's a Soap Opera set in 1930's China. And when I say that's not what I'd wanted, responding with "but there's no way the second season could have lived up to the originals." Sure, that's probably true - but you could have at least tried to make a compelling Space Western.

I wasn't disappointed with the end of FO3 because it was poorly written or not compelling, but because it wasn't at all what I had been expecting from a Fallout game. (The endings always being what I felt were one of the stand-out components of the original games.)

That's a bit of a leap, isn't it? Ruleset has little to do with the ability to "roleplay" a character. Kjarista had a nice little explanation over http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=988302&st=0&p=14289746&#entry14289746. Basically it comes down to there being two predominant ways of approaching an RPG. Most people are a mix of the two. The people you are talking about as "not knowing how to roleplay" simply lean the other way in approach than you do.

And if an RPG only comes down to your ability to use your imagination, then GTA is also an RPG. (That's not actually much of a stretch, I think.) Because I can "inhabit" that character and pretend I'm another character. If I try to obey traffic laws and not kill everyone I run across in the game - that's roleplaying. I could do the same thing in Halo, if I really wanted to. Or basically any game out there.

But, I'm not at all saying FO3 isn't an RPG. Only not the sort of RPG that I prefer.

That I can roleplay any character that I want, regardless of what stats I actually picked (for the most part, at least - and certainly to a greater degree than I could in the originals,) says to me that the ruleset is sort of irrelevant to the gameplay. Which, to me, says that the ruleset (your stats and their effects, for instance) don't work as well. I like roleplaying in a CRPG. I make a character with a specific concept in mind and then make decisions based on who that person is. But I also like it when my stats serve as a vital tool in that roleplaying - in defining who that character is. FO3 doesn't have that. At least not to the degree that the originals did.

And that's where my gripe with FO3 is, to the extent that I do have a gripe with the game. Van Buren didn't look like it was going to make your attributes largely irrelevant to the character you're playing. I might enjoy FO3 very much, but I'm never going to believe that every change they made to the series is an inherently good thing.

I wasn't really all that terribly young when I played the original Fallout games. I'm older now, sure. But my formative years were well behind me when I first picked up my copy of Fallout 1. Could FO3 really have lived up to the legacy of the originals? Probably not - you can never go home again, after all. But I do think it could have been closer to the core concepts of the game (without in any way taking away from the "roleplaying" aspect of the game.)